Geometry Simplification of Wrinkled Wall Semi-rigid Aluminum Containers in Heat Transfer Simulation

Semi-rigid aluminum containers are being used widely in food industries. They have wrinkle shaped walls for strengthening their physical structure. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of wrinkled parts on the heat transfer and temperature distribution of the containers by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis. Therefore, a precise designed geometry of the wrinkled walls container was compared to a straight one. The analysis was carried out based on the physical properties of a carrot-orange soup. The velocity vectors showed a strong circulation towards the core. The Slowest Heating Zone (SHZ) locations were the same for wrinkled and simplified containers. Average temperature of the symmetric plane and the coldest point of SHZ showed less than 1% difference. The lethality imposed to the SHZ in the wrinkled wall container was about 0.4% more than the straight one. The simulation results revealed that wrinkled walls do not play an important role in increasing heat transfer and as a result, such geometries could be simplified while modeling.